Carrier route record

ASPDX→SJC

Alaska Airlines · Portland to San Jose

Flights: 164
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 10%
Carriers: 3

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Alaska Airlines.

Alaska on PDX to SJC earns an A+. Nearly every flight arrives inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 16 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs an hour and a half. That rests on 164 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, SkyWest Airlines, flew 499 at 88.1% on time.

Set against the rest of the country, Alaska's PDX to SJC record is 16 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 163 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

93.9%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 164 completed flights

Avg delay

85 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.00%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

82.3%

Every carrier on PDX to SJC, 1,636 flights

These figures cover 164 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 10 minutes early, which is the part an average hides: most flights here are fine, and the on-time rate is decided by a tail of badly late ones. On-time means under 15 minutes late, the DOT's own threshold.

Carrier by carrier

Alaska against every carrier on PDX to SJC

Alaska flew 164 of the 1,636 flights on PDX to SJC, about 10% of it. Its 93.9% on time is 12 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 82.3%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Alaska at 93.9% to Southwest at 77.3%.

The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. SkyWest Airlines arrives on time 88.1% of the time; Southwest Airlines manages 77.3%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 973 flights means less than a ten-point one.

On-time performance by carrier on PDX to SJC
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Alaska Airlines (this page)thin sample	164	93.9%	85 min	0.00%	A+
SkyWest Airlines	499	88.1%	53 min	0.00%	A+
Southwest Airlines	973	77.3%	53 min	0.41%	B+

SkyWest leads Southwest by 11 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh it.

Departure window

When Alaska runs best on this route

Departure time is the single lever a traveller controls, and it moves the odds more than most people expect. Each bar below is the on-time rate for flights scheduled to leave inside that window, across 164 flights.

5am–8am32 flights96.9%
8am–11am29 flights—
11am–2pm29 flights—
2pm–5pm8 flights—
5pm–8pm1 flights—
8pm–5am65 flights89.2%

Scale runs 80% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The early departures do better, though not dramatically: 96.9% on time for the 5am–8am window against 89.2% for 8pm–5am. Worth taking if the schedule allows, not worth an extra connection. The 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 65 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Alaska on PDX to SJC through the year

Oct–Dec 202533 flights90.9%
Jan–Mar 202660 flights96.7%
Apr–Jun 202671 flights93.0%

Scale runs 80% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Monthly volumes are too low here to break the year into twelve reliable readings. What the twelve-month total says is 93.9% on time across 164 flights.

Quarter by quarter Alaska on PDX to SJC held fairly steady: 90.9% in Oct–Dec 2025, 96.7% in Jan–Mar 2026 and 93.0% in Apr–Jun 2026. A spread of 6 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.

Delay causes

Why Alaska runs late on this route

One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 89% of the 846 delay minutes carriers reported, and the remaining four split what is left. The split is by minutes rather than by flights, so a few very long delays count for as much as many short ones.

Carrier
89%
Late-arriving aircraft
8%
National Airspace System
3%

The largest share of delay minutes, 89%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. Unlike weather, that is a management outcome, and it is the category where the gap between two carriers on the same schedule is genuinely earned. It accounts for 752 of the 846 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 846 reported delay minutes.

Cancellations are rare at 0.00%, below the national 1.81% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Almost no flights are called off; the risk here is arriving late, not not arriving.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 1.8% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. Connections built on this flight are about as safe as US domestic connections get, though a cancelled flight still ignores every layover you give it.

The 569 miles between these two airports put this in the middle of the US network, around two and a half to three hours of block time. That is enough cruise to absorb a ten-minute late pushback and not enough to absorb thirty. It is also long enough that the aircraft usually flies three or four legs a day rather than six, which slows how fast delay compounds.

The return leg runs 95.1% on time across 164 flights, within about a point of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 164 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor but not enough to pin the rate down tightly, and a single bad week moves it by more than a point. Treat the grade as a rough reading.

What to do with this

Booking Alaska on PDX to SJC

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 164 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor and not enough to be confident to better than a couple of points. The 93.9% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 164 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.

Key figures